Brain Bane: Researchers may have found a cause for dyslexia

The mysterious problem often surfaces in grade school: for no apparent reason, children have trouble reading. Though they may be intelligent and highly motivated, they still find it hard to distinguish between simple words like bat and pat. Sometimes the malady goes undiagnosed for years; but if the child is fortunate, a teacher or doctor will recognize the signs of a subtle disability called dyslexia, which may affect 10 million Americans.

In the 1970s scientists began to suspect that people with dyslexia have some fundamental problem with their vision or hearing, since children verbalize - words when learning to read. Studies...